helicalmix

6 ms·

1.
by helicalmix 10mo ago
I think it's totally fair to be skeptical, but it's also not rare to have interventions that are astoundingly effective. Antibiotics and vaccines may not be completely free lunches, but they're very good at what they do.
2.
by helicalmix 1y ago
The transformer paper was published in 2017, and within 8 years (less so, if i'm being honest), we have bots that passed the Turing test. To people with shorter term memories, passing the turing test was a big deal. My point is that ev
3.
by helicalmix 1y ago
> So healthier customers means their profit is 5% of SMALLER_NUMBER. I don't think this is completely true right? Rather, it's more accurate to say that customers that are seen as healthier get to pay less premiums, but custome
4.
by helicalmix 1y ago
can you explain this statement to me more? I think i'm missing something
5.
by helicalmix 1y ago
hmm...doesn't this possibly incentivize ozempic subsidies even more? If you know a "customer" of yours (an individual employee) is only going to be with you until they either change jobs or go on Medicare, then it seems the n
6.
by helicalmix 1y ago
this is not intuitive to me. In your description, it feels like capital more closely resembles carrots then whips? also, the person's only source of wages isn't going to be specifically making sandwiches for just you, no?
7.
by helicalmix 2y ago
https://www.nycp.com/elements/HA1/1345 Basically, in business and life, if you're too in love with craftsmanship of a specific function, but can't relate that well to the general goal, you're more o
8.
by helicalmix 2y ago
hm, maybe we're misinterpreting each other's main point. My reply was to some person who said that AI was akin to astrology, i.e. absolutely fake bullshit, which is bonkers to me. Your reply was that AI, like 3d printing, is likel
9.
by helicalmix 2y ago
sorry, maybe i'm not completely understanding what you mean by "in consumer products". reading your argument on reddit, it seems to me that you don't consider 3d printing a success because there's not one in every h
10.
by helicalmix 2y ago
> It may feel like a normal conversation but is a Chinese Room on steroids. Can you prove that humans are not chinese rooms on steroids themselves?
11.
by helicalmix 2y ago
> Sure, 3d printing has its place (mostly in making plastic parts for things) but it's hardly the revolutionary change in consumer products that it was touted to be. Instead, it's just a hobbiest toy. how sure are you about tha
12.
by helicalmix 2y ago
i feel like a common consumer fallacy is that, because you don't interact with a technology in your day-to-day life, it leads you to conclude that the technology is useless. I guarantee you that the cloud has benefitted you in some way
13.
by helicalmix 2y ago
which hype cycles are you referring to? and, after the dust settled, do you conclusively believe nothing of value was generated from these hype cycles?
14.
by helicalmix 2y ago
sure, but we're not discussing the outsourcing of human companionship in this context. we're discussing the capabilities of current technology.
15.
by helicalmix 2y ago
this is a different thesis than "AI is basically bullshit astrology", so i'm not disagreeing with you. Understanding atomic energy gave us both emission-free energy and the atomic, and you are correct that we can't neces
16.
by helicalmix 2y ago
> GPT-4o being able to describe actual events in real time is interesting, it's yet to be seen if that's useful. sure, but my experience is that if you are able to optimize better on some previous limitation, it legitimately do
17.
by helicalmix 2y ago
i legitimately don't understand this viewpoint. 3 years ago, if you told me you could facetime with a robot, and they could describe the environment and have a "normal" conversation with me, i would be in disbelief, and assum
18.
by helicalmix 3y ago
This feels like an uncreative statement though, as there are many different ways to use this data. For example, what if an engineering manager needs to convince finance for headcount to hire a devex employee?
19.
by helicalmix 3y ago
This is a silly example, because Ilya's umbrella isn't front-end code. To answer your question though, yes, if Ilya was Head of UX Engineering and his front-end code wasn't up to par, he should be fired.
20.
by helicalmix 3y ago
My tongue in cheek response is that you are correct, because a century ago, WWII didn't happen yet. Can you provably demonstrate that education quality was better a century ago? I'm not outright trying to refute you, so much as I
21.
by helicalmix 3y ago
Have you considered that it's possible that both you and Scott are particular good at reasoning, and it's everyone else that is much worse at this stuff? You're pointing out a bunch of errors, but it's not clear to me th
22.
by helicalmix 3y ago
Haha yeah, I've been to rationalist meetups too, and have come to the same conclusion that I don't like them very much. Too much IQ stroking for my tastes. Scott specifically though, has an established history of thinking through
23.
by helicalmix 3y ago
Oh, that's a good point, and I think you're idea is a better behavior model vs. the "stick with prior" idea. What if the conclusion forces behavior though? For voting, you can abstain from voting if you're unclear,
24.
by helicalmix 3y ago
> This is the correct Bayesian action: if I know that a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument, argument convincingness provides no evidence either way. I should ignore it and stick with my prior. If two diametricall
25.
by helicalmix 3y ago
One counterexample for why I think it's not always the best approach is that there are sometimes disproportionate rewards for being right when everyone else is wrong. Doing so, however, requires you to take an idea seriously before it
26.
by helicalmix 3y ago
If anything, Scott is underselling himself, and could probably argue circles against the average educated person. Debates are the rationalists bread and butter, and you should expect them to be better at you the same way you would expect a
27.
by helicalmix 3y ago
which is good, if you want to gain weight
28.
by helicalmix 3y ago
This feels like an overly complex response to a statement that's intentionally simple though. The whole point of Pollan's statement is to have simple guidelines that ignore optimizations in favor of directionally good flexibility,
29.
by helicalmix 3y ago
…sorry, how much exactly do you think quants make?
30.
by helicalmix 3y ago
I think it’s a happy medium, and I don’t think the message of the article is for you. More so for the hyper ambitious people set on generating uhnw

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